A customer buying a computer peripheral such as a printer, a monitor, or a speaker system often wants to see a demonstration of the peripherals' capabilities. In particular, when choosing a printer, a customer is generally interested in the print quality, the speed of print operations, and the noise the printer makes. A customer could rely on pre-printed pages and a specification sheet as indications of the printer's capability, but the customer may be skeptical of the pre-printed material and may be unwilling to purchase a printer without seeing the printer in action. Accordingly, there is a general need for point-of-sale demonstrations of computer peripherals.
One technique for providing printer demonstrations is to include in a printer non-volatile memory that stores one or more demonstration pages and control circuitry for accessing and printing the stored demonstration pages at a customer's request. However, implementing the necessary control circuitry and memory for demonstrations adds cost to each printer without a corresponding improvement in performance.
Another technique for providing demonstrations is to connect a printer to a computer that controls the printer. This technique is often impractical at the point of sale because of the cost associated with having a computer dedicated to controlling printer demonstrations and technical complexities of controlling a large number of printers of different types. Additionally, customers typically would need to ask for help when activating the demonstration, and the complexity of the demonstration might present the printer unfavorably.
Yet another technique for providing printer demonstrations without burdening each printer with additional hardware is to construct a demonstration server having the minimum capabilities required to operate the printer. A demonstration server is basically a compact computer capable of little more than sending print images to printer. A disadvantage of constructing a demonstration server is the cost and development effort required to design the demonstration server, which is not a commercial product. The operation of the demonstration server can be simpler than a conventional computer operating a printer, but generally, the demonstration server would still require a separate power supply and space in the stores selling the printers.
A method for demonstrating the capabilities of a computer peripheral at the point of sale is desired that does not increase the cost of each peripheral, does not require significant design effort for production of a demonstration server that is not a commercial product, and does not require complex control systems, a power supply, or space at the point of sale.